Title: DreamerAuthor: Ariane DeVereWord count: 1895 (purely coincidentally! I’m not inventing yet another new form of Sherlock fic. Although, now you come to mention it ...)Rating: RBeta: the wonderfully reassuring verityburnsDisclaimer: Sherlock belongs to way more powerful and wealthy people than me.

Summary: All John wants is a good night’s sleep, and possibly a nice dream to go with it. So what on earth keeps waking him up just as the dream’s getting to the good bit...?

Dreamer

You’re not even sure whether it’s dark or if your eyes are closed, but it doesn’t matter and anyway you neither know nor care, because even though you’re peripherally aware that this is a dream, the sensations are so real and all you can concentrate on is the feeling of those warm hands sliding gently up your sides; and that mouth ... oh, that mouth ... the mouth you can never take your eyes off, that beautiful mouth which you have fantasised about for so long ... that mouth is so close to your own that you can feel his warm breath on your cheek and his lips are almost brushing against your skin, and then his voice, his voice, that voice is murmuring softly that he wants you, that he wants you, and as his breath moves closer to your own mouth you strain up towards him and finally, finally his lips touch yours and you have waited so long for this that you cannot help but groan ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

... and John’s eyes snapped open, instantly scanning his surroundings for danger. With no sign of anything visibly threatening in the room, he sat up and concentrated on listening for any sounds in the flat but everything was still and quiet. Then a fox shrieked in the alleyway and a second one began to yelp repeatedly, and John sank back onto his elbows, grumbling in annoyance. Bloody things – it was bad enough that the local urban vermin were getting their end away when he wasn’t, without them waking him up at oh-christ-hundred-hours to tell him all about it.

Sighing, he lay back down. He was sure that he’d been in the middle of a rather pleasant dream before the noise had disturbed him, but the abruptness of his awakening had immediately driven all memory of it from his head. Turning over onto his side, he closed his eyes and hoped that he wasn’t going to lie awake all night struggling to get back to sleep ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

... and as that sensational mouth fastens over yours, it feels every bit as good as you always dreamed that it would, and even though your mind tells you that this is a dream you don’t care; all you want is for this moment to last because his lips are parting and the first hint of a warm wet tongue slips through them and you whimper into his mouth and now his hands begin to slide down your body again and your hips are already rising for him and even though you can barely cope with the sensations of his kiss you want him to touch you, oh please let him touch you, and his fingers are sliding along your hip bones and moving downwards and inwards and again you rise towards his hands, silently begging as you gasp against his lips, and you feel his smile even as his tongue moves deeper into your mouth and you know that the moment he touches you you’ll be lost forever, but then you were already lost from the moment you saw him and if this is being lost then you never want to be found because this beautiful man is all that you want, and you need him so much, and then at last his hand slides around you and firmly grasps you and your hips buck upwards as his other hand moves inexorably downwards and curves under you and those fingers … oh god, those fingers – he must, please, he must, and then he does and you writhe under him as his fingers fill you, and you groan blissfully …

~~~~~~~~~~~~

… and John jolted awake, his senses on full alert and his eyes wide. For a moment he felt as if he was back in Afghanistan; that same feeling when he had been urgently patching up injured colleagues while simultaneously being aware of the dangers all around him, ready to grab his gun at any moment to protect his patients and himself. Again he wondered what he had been dreaming about; he didn’t think that he’d been back in Kandahar in his dream but something must have given him this sense of anxiety and uncertainty. But the memory was gone now, leaving him a little uneasy but unsure why. He listened carefully, checking that the flat was still quiet, then closed his eyes, although this time he was sure that he wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon …

~~~~~~~~~~~~

... and those clever, talented fingers are moving inside you and if this is just a dream then you don’t ever want to wake up because this is everything you’ve ever wanted from him, and then he slowly withdraws his fingers and you whine into his mouth but he smiles again and whispers, “Patience,” softly against your lips, and then he’s moving over you and you shudder with pleasurable anticipation as you realise what he will do next, and you want it, you want it so much, you want him so much and then he’s there and again your hips rise and you’re silently begging, begging him, oh please, oh please my love, my only love, my everything, please, and as he slowly slides inside you, you wonder how you ever waited this long and whether you will ever feel this complete again and you know that you belong to him forever and you realise that you’re keening softly and as he begins to move inside you the sensations are beyond comparison or description and this is where you want to be for all time and as he bends over you and kisses you again you know that you’re lost and it’s almost more than you can bear but this is everything you ever wanted and you groan deeply into his mouth ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh, for fu...” John sat up abruptly, although his soldier instinct still ensured that he checked the room and listened for sounds of disturbance inside the building before he allowed his irritation to surface fully.

Eventually he sighed, realising that he wasn’t going to sleep again tonight. He was now too wired to be able to relax properly – and it didn’t help that he was also half hard. What the hell had he been dreaming about? He lay back and momentarily considered dealing with his erection but he wasn’t sure he was in the mood after such a rude awakening, and besides, those bloody foxes would probably distract him partway through his fantasies and put him off his stroke. Instead, he got up and quietly walked downstairs, resisting the urge to stomp noisily just to release some of his frustration. Looking through into the living room he saw no sign of Sherlock, and as he turned into the kitchen he realised that his bedroom door was closed. Sherlock usually preferred to catnap on the sofa but on the rare occasions when he did go to bed he tended to sleep like the dead for several hours. Despite this, John kept the noise down so that he wouldn’t disturb him, turning the tap on just slightly and slowly filling the kettle before switching it on to boil. As he waited, he leaned back against the work surface and tiredly closed his eyes, almost drifting off to sleep ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

... and once again you can’t help but groan as his pace increases, and as the sensations become even more intense you sob his name ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

John’s eyes opened in disbelief at the sound which had just emanated from Sherlock’s bedroom. Now that he heard it again, he realised instantly what had kept waking him up. That bastard – it was his intense erotic groaning which had repeatedly disturbed John’s sleep. That was why the sound had briefly given him Afghanistan flashbacks – upstairs in his room he had heard only the groans and not the emotion behind them, and it had reminded him of treating injured colleagues. Sherlock, on the other hand, was anything but injured: the lanky sod was clearly having some kind of fabulous dream and was vocalising the pleasure he was feeling.

John sighed in exasperation. Bloody typical. Here he was, desperate for a shag, while that git – who wasn’t even interested in sex when he was awake – was apparently having some gorgeous sexual fantasy in his sleep. John raised his eyes skywards and projected evil thoughts to the gods in charge of dreaming. Why couldn’t he have a nice sexy dream like that? And – let’s be honest here – why couldn’t he have a nice sexy dream about the man who was currently having the nice sexy dream? It had been some months since he had first begun to realise that his attraction to Sherlock was becoming serious, but while he occasionally indulged in fantasies about what it would be like to make love with him, he’d never had a full-on dream about it while he was sleeping. And just who the hell was Sherlock dreaming about, anyway – and if John was feeling this jealous about whoever it was, just how bad was this attraction becoming?

And then Sherlock sobbed, voicing a single syllable full of passion and longing and desire, and John froze as the implications struck him like a cricket bat to the back of his head.

“John.”

Holy shit.

This couldn’t be happening. Maybe this was a dream; maybe it was John’s internal fantasies finally coming to the forefront of his mind while he was asleep. He shook his head and resisted the temptation to pinch himself. Surely nobody ever thought of pinching themselves while dreaming. He must be awake … but could Sherlock really be dreaming about him? How could someone as gorgeous and aloof and unattainable as Sherlock Holmes ever have the slightest interest in somebody as normal as John?

He quietly walked closer to the bedroom door, wondering if there was any way that he could confirm that Sherlock wasn’t just having some bizarre dream about being molested by Molly Hooper and was urging John to get her off him.

“Oh God, John – please.”

John’s breathing became erratic. There was no way that anybody – not even Sherlock – would beg to be rescued in that voice. This was really happening. Sherlock was dreaming about him and maybe, just maybe, was channelling what he wanted in real life into his dreams.

John’s hand closed over the door handle as he fought to make the decision whether to back away and leave things as they were, or to take the chance and venture into the unknown. If he opened the door and woke Sherlock, what would happen? Would Sherlock be angry, embarrassed; would he deny having such a human reaction towards his flatmate, falling back on his insistence that his own body was nothing more than transport and that ‘the work’ was everything? Would he ridicule John’s pathetic emotional desires, see them as nothing but weakness?

Or would Sherlock finally admit that he was human too and that his needs matched John’s?

If John walked away now, would he ever sleep again, knowing what might have happened if only he had faced the danger?

Could he dare cross that line and risk the dream?

Would it ruin their relationship and endanger the dream?

Or should he take the chance and possibly live the dream?

John Watson made his choice.

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Quite a few people, both here on LJ and on AO3 and FF.net, asked for a sequel to this story. I don’t ever write sequels. So here it is:

Author’s Note: Phew. *fans self* Well, there it is: the fic which had me emailing my LJ mates last week and explaining that, while sitting on the train that morning writing notes to myself after being inspired during the walk to the station, I had had to contort myself into somewhat bizarre positions to ensure that nobody sitting beside me or behind me could see me writing, "It didn’t help that he was half hard. He considered dealing with his erection ...”

Why must my plotbunny nibble my toes at the most inconvenient moments?!

Then again, it did prompt Verity to email back, “My baby is writing porn on the train! I am so proud!”

I’m not sure why I was so bothered about it in the first place, seeing as most of the people around me were reading 50 Shades of Porn That’s Not Half As Good As The Porn That My Friends Write And They Deserve To Get Paid For It Far More (I may have mis-remembered the title slightly).

But did you see the word count?! Purely coincidental after a last-moment edit, but I may have bounced excitedly around the room for a while ...